Mamoru Hosoda's Scarlet Review

Scarlet is the latest film from Mamoru Hosoda, the legendary director behind Belle and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. The film is a reimagining of Hamlet where the hero, Scarlet, dies after failing to exact her revenge, and as she fights for another chance at revenge, she’s forced to ask if that’s how she should be living her life.

Videos by ComicBook.com

While Scarlet won’t have a wide release in English until early 2026, the film will be shown at various festivals in late 2025 for an award-qualifying run, and for anyone who gets a chance to see Scarlet early, it’s easy to see it as another visually stunning film from Mamoru Hosoda, even if the writing doesn’t always hold up.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

PROS	CONS
Incredible visuals and music from start to finish.	3D visuals not as fluid as they could be.
The characters are highly engaging when they’re written well.	Main characters fluctuate between being boring and insufferable more often than not.
	The handling of the movie’s themes are preachy and all-around boring

Why Mamoru Hosoda’s Latest Film Is A Visual Masterpiece (For The Most Part)

After the first few trailers for Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet came out, many fans were skeptical of the visuals being largely 3D, as not only does 3D animation have a history of looking terrible in anime, but the trailers often showed off some notably clunky animation that didn’t fit with Hosoda’s statements of aiming for a new style of animation.

Fortunately, the finished product is nowhere near as bad as fans thought it would be, as for the most part, not only is the 3D used to create stunning visuals that would likely be too complicated for traditional animation, but the overall CG animation is gorgeous to look at, making for some of the best CGI in recent anime.

The main problem, however, comes from how that contrasts with the 2D animation. At first, the 3D visuals of the afterlife seem to be used in contrast to the 2D visuals of Earth and emphasize the surreality of the story, but the film is ultimately inconsistent about which animation style it uses, sometimes even using both in one scene.

As good as the 3D is, the 2D is undeniably better at every turn, and that’s especially apparent when both styles appear in the same scene. Aside from the dragon and some of the environment, few things in Scarlet feel like they necessitated 3D animation, so it’s hard to understand what, exactly, Mamoru Hosoda was going with Scarlet’s visual style.

Scarlet’s Characters Are Its Biggest Strength And Its Biggest Weakness

Naturally, the main driving force behind Scarlet is its cast, but they’re a bit of a mixed bag. The characters lifted from Hamlet are as fun as one would expect, especially with how absurdly evil Claudius is written to be, and Scarlet is an engaging lead with a strong arc of overcoming her trauma and becoming a better person.

Things are far from perfect, however. Scarlet is built up as a powerful fighter driven by vengeance like Batman or the Punisher, but that never properly shows itself due to her always needing someone to save her. It all makes her feel very incompetent and lacking in agency, a stark contrast from the usually strong writing of Mamoru Hosoda’s heroines.

Making things even worse is the secondary lead, Hijiri. Not only is it sexist for Scarlet to always need a man to save her, but his constant admonishment of violence just makes him feel preachy as opposed to feeling like Scarlet’s conscience, and while the film does something clever with it near the climax, it hardly makes up for it.

There are plenty of times when Scarlet and Hijiri work well as a duo, but unfortunately, most of the film just sees them being at their worst whenever they need to play off one another, and since they’re the characters with the most screentime and development, that plays a major part in the film feeling so disjointed.

Scarlet Doesn’t Know How To Make A Tired Message Fun To Watch

If anything brings Scarlet down, though, it’s its muddied themes and poor execution. Scarlet’s story is a classic story about the hero not allowing themselves to be consumed by revenge, and moments like Scarlet crying as she realizes how much happier she could be and the ultimate resolution of her conflict with Claudius do make good use of those themes.

The problem, however, is that everything else surrounding it is bad. With Hijiri’s presence, most of the story seems like it’s mostly about preaching for non-violence, but it acts like fighting is objectively bad, even when that almost gets Scarlet killed. That’s another point the story lightens up on, but unfortunately, the road to that point is nothing but cumbersome.

Scarlet’s writing is another reason why this doesn’t work that well; with how wildly incompetent a fighter Scarlet is, she rarely ever gets to dominate anyone to the point of going too far, so when the film constantly talks about how she’s being consumed by revenge, it’s hard not to listen to that and wonder where it’s even coming from.

Revenge stories are old to the point of being cliché, but they can still work as long as it’s understood why the hero needs to change and if everything surrounding it is largely entertaining. Unfortunately, very little of that sort is done in Scarlet, and as cathartic as the conclusion is, it doesn’t justify everything before it being so tedious.

Mamoru Hosoda’s Latest Film Needs To Be Watched, Despite Its Flaws

On a surface level, Scarlet has far more working against it than for it. While the film is visually gorgeous, the characters are highly inconsistent, and their shortcomings are made even worse by the lackluster narrative they’re stuck with, so it’s easy to see why even a diehard fan of Mamoru Hosoda’s filmography would get bored with it.

That being said, as flawed as Scarlet might be, the emotional depth to the moments where it works cannot be understated, and even when it struggles to justify its story, the sincerity with which it tries to explore its flawed narrative is still as engaging as one would expect from a Mamoru Hosoda project.

Unlike Ufotable’s Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle or Chainsaw Man: The Movie — Reze Arc, Scarlet won’t be an anime film that takes the world by storm, but if anyone’s looking for a genuinely heartfelt film that can still be fun, despite its many flaws, then they would be remiss to not give Scarlet a chance when it comes out this February.